European H2 Valley 2022 Awards
The Clean Hydrogen Partnership 2022 Awards were announced during European Hydrogen Week in Brussels. These Awards celebrate projects that have achieved excellence in clean hydrogen technologies research and innovation. Now in their fifth year, the awards provide an added incentive for project beneficiaries to bring research and innovation to the market.
The Clean Hydrogen Partnership selected the winning outreach and valley projects and the result for the European H2 Valley 2022 Award was a triple valley success. The three winning valleys are HEAVENN in the Netherlands, Basque Hydrogen Corridor in Spain (BH2C), and eFarm in Germany.
Pauline Rouch, Head of Cabinet at the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, introduced the awards: “Although the concept of hydrogen valleys is relatively recent, it was high time to honour the outstanding efforts of the communities working behind the scenes to bring technology, innovation and entrepreneurship together. The winners today will be an inspiration for many.”
Six criteria were used to identify the winning valleys: the extent of value chain coverage, hydrogen production volume, the variety of hydrogen end uses, project finalisation, the stakeholder landscape, and project innovativeness.
Accepting the award, José Ignacio Zudaire, president of the Basque Hydrogen Corridor (BH2C) project consortium said: “This award motivates us to continue our work for the new hydrogen economy. The cornerstone of this project is to become a region with net zero emissions by 2050, while maintaining the weight of the industrial sector in the GDP.”
Director of hydrogen strategy at the New Energy Coalition, Patrick Cnubben, accepted the award on behalf of the HEAVENN consortium: “This project functions as a magnet. It creates more projects. We need to make this hydrogen promise work. HEAVENN is the start.” .
The Clean Hydrogen Partnership and its predecessor, the FCH JU, started working on the concept of hydrogen valleys in 2017. Currently, 38 European hydrogen valleys at different stages of development are part of the Mission Innovation Hydrogen Valleys Platform. Of these, 17 have reached financial investment decision level, an important step for project realisation in the near term.
This year’s Clean Hydrogen Partnership award categories recognise the best innovation, success story, project outreach and, for the first time, the recently established European hydrogen valleys. The finalists for the best innovation awards were selected by the partnership, based on the results in the European Commission’s EU Innovation Radar Platform.